


too weak to fuss, too weak to die

by Anonymous



Series: a feeling's not a thing you own [12]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Depression, Dirty Thoughts, Eating Disorders, Gen, Suicide, Violent Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:42:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21686230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Hope dies fast, but lives again just as quickly.Thomas thought he was getting better.
Relationships: Deceit Sanders & Thomas Sanders, Logic | Logan Sanders & Thomas Sanders
Series: a feeling's not a thing you own [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1453462
Comments: 3
Kudos: 40
Collections: anonymous





	too weak to fuss, too weak to die

**Author's Note:**

> hey, remember how relaxed the story was last time? remember how it was a fun romp with stretchy limb jokes and a baby boy? remember how the content warnings were basically non-existent?
> 
> here they are now: binge-eating, internalised fatphobia (written by a slim (-ish) author with an eating disorder and issues with hypersensitivity so seriously i feel every wibble of my body), graphic, violent intrusive thoughts (pulling body parts off using implements, brief genital gore), unsanitary intrusive thoughts (human coprophagia), overuse of italics in dramatic situations

  
**HOPE – A New Side??**   
487,904 views ⋅ Dec 2, 2019

  
**Thomas Sanders**   
3.27M subscribers

  
**14,679 comments**

  
**PandaFander** 4 hours ago   
Oh my gosh is Thomas alright?? Hope is so adorable, though ngl I’m pretty worried.   
  
**Lucy the Teenage Wolf ~** 1 day ago   
Hope: people are good!!!!   
Deceit (Ethan?): ding dong you are wrong   
Hope: **literally just drops dead**   
▼ View reply   
**Reese Kathleen** 15 hours ago   
Honestly, it was Logan who made hope die. All Ethan (asdfjg canon name!!!!!) did was be nice. Logan just had to bring everyone down.   
  
**1800 R U Mighty** 1 day ago   
two months after uploading a suicide note video he comes back with a sanders sides   
▼ View replies   
**have you ever seen the rain** 5 hours ago   
what suicide note video????????   
**loitumagirl2007** 4 hours ago   
The one where he basically said he was killing himself? It got privated like a few hours later, then Joan used his twitter to say that Thomas was safe and alive, and basically none of his media or accounts have been updated since.   
**have you ever seen the rain** 1 hour ago   
is he alive?????????   
**Ash Ketchum** 19 minutes ago   
…he literally just filmed and uploaded a video   
**jungkook stan** 18 minutes ago   
eeeeyo fellow phannie!!!!!!!   
  
**ichigo away** 2 days ago   
i mean, it’s nice to see that thomas is alive, and the sides are okay, but i’m still worried about him. we haven’t seen patton, remus or roman since june. thomas has said nothing on social media since That happened, and the next thing he does is make a ten minute sanders sides video where half the normal cast is gone and he’s got a new side (!?!?) whp seems to have a similar role to patton and roman.   
i don’t know what’s up, but i don’t think it’s anything good   
  
**||-// help me bowl o rice ||-//** 2 days ago   
4:56 anyone else notice that Deceit has a canon name now?? He’s called Ethan, like ethos!!!! Like how Patton and Logan are named after Pathos and Logos!!!!!   
  
**Urarara Rararara** 2 days ago   
more sanders sides when?????

* * *

Hope shows up again the day after Thomas had met him.

The video took barely any time to edit, since the Sides’ weirdness made filming each of them individually simultaneously with one camera weirdly possible, and all he had to do was insert the opening and the end card. By the morning after it was filmed, it was uploaded, and the comments had begun rolling in.

Hope and Ethan had sat with him while he read the nicer ones, but, with some meaner ones, Hope temporarily flickered out to be replaced by Virgil.

Ethan had talked him through logical fallacies, while Logan had pointed out blatant lies written by some viewers. Virgil, however, opted to play Devil’s Advocate. Wait, actually, no. If Thomas said that Virgil _‘chose’_ to do it, then that would negate his expression after every cruel sentence. It made him look like he’d bitten into a lemon after forgetting to brush his teeth for a week, or like he’d just been tricked into biting on a fresh, warm turd.

Ew. Thomas actually needs to swill his mouth out after thinking that, because it’s evolving into more intrusive thoughts. Like, what if there was corn in it? Would it split open under his teeth in a burst of sweetness?

“Thomas?” Logan softly asks, “Are you quite alright?”

Thomas’s throat tightens, like he’s swallowing, or like he’s about to regurgitate his fruity breakfast in a wave of vomit, but nothing goes down or comes up.

When he can breathe again, he replies, “Yes. No. I don’t know.”

He peeled an orange this morning. Could he peel his skin off in the same way?

“Would it benefit you to talk about them?” asks Logan, with a little more strength in his voice, this time around.

“It will help to tell us,” says Ethan. His tone is warm; calm. Measured.

And, ooh, Deceit’s scales! Could he pull them out, one by one, with pliers? Tweezers? Would it be different from pulling out fingernails, or pretty similar? He could make a necklace or a bracelet with them, all bundled together loosely on string, and it would rattle when he shook his wrist!

Thomas feels each of his fingernails individually. They’re still there. They won’t fall out. Despite that, he still can’t stop thinking about pulling out Ethan’s scales when he looks at him, and he can’t really stop looking at him, so he closes his eyes and scrunches them up really tight.

What if he cut off his own eyelids? He could lick the inside bit of skin, where all the lines and veins are visible. Soon, his eyes would dry up, and he could pull them out and pull apart the layers, and squish them into jelly, and-

“Thomas, please look at me.”

He doesn’t want to. He wants to pull his hands away from the ones resting on his knees, intertwining their fingers together. He wants to feel that Side’s cheek, then press his thumb into the eye socket. He wants- He wants-

“Remus. It’s Remus,” Thomas mutters to himself, but also, to the many himselves that were in the room with him.

A mental image of bisected genitalia fills his head, and his eyes instantaneously open to replace the sight. In front of his thighs, on his knees, is Logan.

“Remus is back.” Thomas can’t stop the smile from spreading on his face. “Remus is okay; that means Roman’s okay, right?”

Virgil’s voice rises over the thoughts in Thomas’s head in his normal dry tone. “So, what? You’re happy about having intrusive thoughts now?”

“They don’t feel like _my_ thoughts,” Thomas responds. “Like, they feel weird, and out-of-place… Virgil, I think I’m getting better!”

* * *

Dr. Faber also thinks that Thomas is getting better, but tells him to not get too excited, yet.

He’s enthused to meet Hope, who is just as happy to meet him.

“Somehow, you are simultaneously my easiest and most difficult patient,” Dr. Faber tells him.

Thomas blinks, still with a bewildered smile on his face. “How’s that?”

Logan raises his hand slightly. “I am also intrigued. Those two words are antonymous.”

“Anonymous?”

“Antonymous.” Pulling out a vocabulary card to wave, Logan explains, “Adjective: Having a diametrically opposed meaning of; being an antonym.”

Virgil groans from his little corner, from where he can see both the window and the door. “ _God_ , Teach, just say that they’re opposites.”

“They’re opposites.”

Hope rocks back and forth on his feet. “But how is he easy and difficult?”

“Because of your Sides,” Dr. Faber says. “Not many patients are open about their anthropomorphic personality traits, if they indeed have any. In fact, I have no experience of anyone with Sides like yours. They are loud, and insist on coming out at any opportunity.”

“I’m gay,” interjects Hope.

Thomas says, slowly, “That doesn’t sound easy.”

With a smile, Dr. Faber replies, “They are exactly the reason why it is easier to help you. With your Sides helping you, you are capable of being far more open about your feelings and needs, as each Side will self-advocate. This means, Thomas, that your inner conflicts become far more clear-cut, and therefore, easier to understand.”

“So, you’re saying that being obnoxious and loud will make it easier to treat us?” asks Virgil, in a way that Thomas is fairly certain isn’t sincere.

“Not exactly, but close,” says Dr. Faber. “The fact that each of you are doing your best to care for Thomas can sometimes make you boisterous, and more difficult to corral. However, that hasn’t been the case, recently.”

“’Cause Remus and Roman fucked off somewhere,” snorts Virgil.

“Ethan has also disappeared,” adds Logan.

Thomas doesn’t know what he’s saying until he says it. “He’s got them locked in his secret sex dungeon.”

Hope claps his hands in the awkward silence. “And we’re pretty sure that Remus is ju-u-ust _fine_!”

Then Thomas has to explain to Dr. Faber that, no, he’s fairly certain that the infinite space in his head does not contain a sex dungeon, while Dr. Faber tries to awkwardly explain that it would be fine, even though it being ‘fine’ wouldn’t matter an iota, because there _isn’t_ a secret sex dungeon that belongs to Ethan in Thomas’s head.

It gets to the point where he summons Ethan, just to prove his point.

“What is it?”

Ethan’s mouth is curled up in a sneer, but Thomas figures that everyone can see that it’s a hasty way of hiding his disquietude at some unknown thing. His cloak is bundled around him like he’s trying to disguise his body by drawing himself into a cocoon.

“I don’t know what sex is,” Hope pipes up.

With thick sarcasm, Ethan replies, “ _Sure_ you don’t. Is _this_ why I’m here?”

Thomas thinks that he was supposed to say something else, but the feeling of sickly sweet nausea in his stomach rolls around, and a question pops out of his mouth without his input.

“Where are Roman and Remus?”

Ethan tilts his head and his hat, so his scaled side is shadowed from the light.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

It’s a blatant lie. His intonation has become that near sing-song that he used to constantly use to mock Thomas and the other Sides. Thomas barely feels nostalgia for that simpler time. This is _supposed_ to be Ethan, who looks after him, and tells him that everything will be alright. Ethan, who stands strong as a figure that Thomas can trust, because Ethan _cared_ , even when it seemed like he didn’t.

“Tell me.” Thomas’s voice is lower than he thought it would be.

Deceit raises an eyebrow. “Tell you what?”

“Tell me where Remus and Roman are!” Thomas demands in a sudden yell.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

Giving a single, humourless laugh, Thomas snaps, “Don’t go all HAL-9000 on me, you… You _asshole_! Tell me!”

“You don’t want to know,” replies Deceit, with weighted words.

“I _do_!” Thomas stands so he’s at eye-level with his Side. If they reached out their arms now, their fingertips would not brush. “I’m your Centre, _Deceit_. If I want to know something, you have to tell me it.”

“And I’m your _Side_ , Thomas. Not only that; I’m the Side who _hides the things you don’t want to know_.” He makes an aborted gesture with a hand that frees itself from inside his cloak. “You say that you want to know, but, _trust me_ , you _don’t_.”

Thomas lets out a caustic cackle. “Yeah, you’re my Side. My _deceitful_ Side, who lies constantly and consistently, and who keeps trying to make me lie for _no apparent reason_!”

Ethan takes a step closer.

If they reached out their arms now, they could brush their fingertips against each other’s forearms.

“I’m _trying_ to _protect_ you,” he spits. “If I do something, it is for your benefit. Please, I _beg_ , do not ask me about your Creativities again.”

A few minutes after Deceit has sunken out, Dr. Faber asks, “Are you okay?”

Thomas nods and stands up. Flatly, he says, “I’m going home.”

“Will you be safe?”

Without looking back, Thomas gives a thumbs up.

Virgil is the only one who follows him as the door slams shut.

* * *

There’s about a one in one hundred chance of the driver dying in a car crash, which is why Thomas doesn’t stamp on the gas and aim for the nearest lamppost. That, and, well, he did tell Dr. Faber he’d be okay, or at least he _implied_ it.

It’s just that those intrusive thoughts are back, and even though he knows that thoughts are thoughts, and you can’t control them, and that it’s completely normal to be repulsed by your own brain, his quivering hands still long to reach out and _hurt_. He drives past pedestrians both fat and thin and wonders how their bodies would split if he hit them with his car. What does fat look like when it’s stored, and what would it look like if it spilt out over the tarmac with all the guts and bones?

No. He can think about that in regards to himself. He can cut up his thighs and his belly, and the flabs of fat under his arms that jiggle and sway when he moves. Why bother hurting other people and cementing yourself as an awful, irredeemable person, when you can see how bodies break while also engaging in the truest form of penitence: self-flagellation.

Remus is a part of him. He thought those thoughts. He’s a bad person.

But he can’t hurt himself. Not only would the scars be difficult to hide – he wants to start out on his wrists, so he doesn’t forget where his vital arteries and whatever are, and global warming means that it’s going to be difficult to justify long sleeves constantly – but he’s also a fucking coward.

It takes him a few tries to unlock his front door, and he slams it behind him without bothering to shut it properly. His keys slide off the coffee table when he throws them down there. He shouldn’t be so stupid, but he _is_ , so he’s _angry_. He shouldn’t even _be_ angry, because it’s just a little thing. He could just pick up the keys and get on with his life.

But he’s not, because he’s _stupid_.

He leaves the keys wherever they’ve fallen and stalks to the kitchen, leaning forwards like it’ll make him go faster. One foot falls in front of the other, and he focuses on that, until he’s staring at the open fridge.

He’s doing this. He’s actually doing this, isn’t he?

It’s this or cutting himself, he thinks, and cutting himself is scary. Cutting himself would leave behind scars that he doesn’t want to deal with. They’d be visible to everyone, and he’d have to explain why his wrists are covered in white lines. He’d have to start talking about self-harm, and help his young audience on how to _recover_. He was meant to be a zany, relatable, funny internet guy. Now he’s not just ‘The Storytime Guy’, he’s also ‘that guy who posted his suicide note on the internet for an audience with an average age of thirteen to watch’. He can’t do that.

He can’t do this.

His hands hit the bottom of the bread bag, so he moves on and starts eating the stuff Joan left in the fridge. Perfectly portioned for three meals a day, with little occasional snacks in between. Healthy. Normal.

Thomas keeps eating, and lets his mind drift. The rage and fury turns inwards, then begins to melt away with the consistency of the thick, cold soup he ladles into his mouth.

It’s easy to lose himself in the rhythm of scooping, chewing, and swallowing. The food slides down his throat and settles into his stomach. He doesn’t need to think anymore; he just needs to keep going.

Until it hurts.

At first, he can make do with just undoing the flies of his jeans. He tries to pretend that nothing happened, but it’s the first step to leaving the dizzy state of detachment that abstracts the world outside of him, where nothing exists except for the act of excessive consumption.

Usually, when he reaches the point of feeling shame, he stops eating. He just sits and ruminates on his own abhorrence and makes a few token attempts to throw up that always fail. He pretends that he’s going to join a gym, or get a personal trainer, all to make up for the surplus of calories that he keeps tipping down his throat.

If he stops now, though, he can’t guarantee that he won’t open the ziptied knife drawer. So, instead, he reaches up, with his gut churning in pain, and grabs more food.

He feels every fruit, meat, and starch that he chews. He feels them get stuck between his teeth, and turn to mush under his molars, and get swallowed down his dry throat in three or four attempts. Each mouthful adds a pound of shame to his shoulders, and he almost wishes it could literally crush him. A flattened pancake of a man wouldn’t have to live like this. Well, that’s obvious, since he’d be dead.

If there’s one thing he’s grateful for, it’s that the eyes watching him are only his own; duplicated and exaggerated, but, still, only his own.

He’s fucked up before. He’s made jokes that didn’t land that lasted for years after they’d have been forgotten otherwise because he made them in the middle of an otherwise-good part of a YouTube video. He did way too much riffing on pretty sexual songs during his early Vine days. He’s lost his pants on stage, for fuck’s sake!

The greatest indignity he’s experienced, though, is sitting on his kitchen floor, surrounded by translucent Tupperware tubs, with food smeared on his cheeks and his stomach hanging out from under his shirt, because he just wants to _die_ and he’s too ashamed to do anything about it.

He’s read that, once someone’s gained weight, it’s basically impossible to lose it permanently. It’s not due to lack of willpower; it’s because that’s how human bodies are _designed_. It’s healthier to be fat than skinny, he knows, but he still lusts after the pipe dream of being one of those skinny boys, with ribs you can count and hipbones that jut out like little bony handrests.

Someone said in the comments to his last video that he looked _‘cuddly’_. Like some sort of teddy bear that you could curl up against and go to sleep with. He’d prefer to be beautiful, in the way he has to be.

You see, princes aren’t fat. Kings can be fat, but they either have to be stupid or evil if they are, or even both. But princes, and superheroes, and all the leading men in every musical, aren’t fat. They aren’t allowed to be. They _shouldn’t_ be. What protagonist gets to be fat, and capable, and good? Jack Black as a fucking CGI _panda_?

That’s it. Great. All the dreams he thought he could have, and they’re gone, because he’s a sick bastard with no self-control. There’s no hope for him anymore.

Thomas kneels on the tiles like he’s praying to the gods of self-destruction in the refrigerator glow. If he wants to kill himself, then tough luck, because he’s just too tired to bother. He just wants to lie and decay; cut out the middleman that is death.

The chill takes a while to fade, after the door thuds shut. A shadow falls over him; picks him up in his steady arms, and runs a shaking hand through his dirty hair.

Then he’s on the sofa, soft and familiar, and a cushion is laid under his head, and a blanket is draped over his humiliating body. Once again, the unsteady hand runs through his hair, tugging a little on the knots. It feels accidental, though the hand moves away after that.

If he was more aware, he would have made a protesting sound about that.

As it is, he’s already half-asleep, with the tear tracks on his face still running down his cheeks and chin. He’s not even aware enough to recognise the honey-syrup voice, thick with some repressed emotion.

“Oh, _Thomas_.”


End file.
